Skeleton Found in Concrete Believed to Be Missing Boy

An anonymous phone call to Los Angeles police has led to the grisly discovery of a child’s remains entombed in a trash can filled with concrete, and detectives said Thursday the victim is believed to be the brother of a girl whose body also was found encased in concrete last year.

Police discovered the trash can Tuesday at a Public Storage facility in South-Central Los Angeles near the Harbor Freeway after the tipster said the girl’s missing brother could be found in a storage facility somewhere on Manchester Boulevard, police said.

Based on information provided by the caller and evidence found in the storage unit, police arrested Maurice Nathaniel Moore, 21, Wednesday on suspicion of murder and will seek an additional murder charge against Moore’s mother, Madie Lee Moore, 43, said Detective Eric Campos of the Newton Division.

Madie Moore is scheduled to go on trial Monday in the murder of 8-year-old Latoya Harris, whose body was found in July encased in concrete in a 30-gallon trash can behind Moore’s rented South-Central home. Moore was the girl’s aunt and legal guardian.

Following the tipster’s call, Campos said, a metal can was removed from the storage complex at 345 W. Manchester and taken to the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, where the concrete was chipped apart Wednesday.

Scott Carrier, a spokesman for the coroner’s office, said the body “appears to be a child. We will have to call in an anthropologist to examine the bones and determine the sex and race and hopefully establish the cause of death.”

Police believe the child found Tuesday may have been dead for several years. “When we were investigating Latoya Harris’ death we learned there was a brother that was missing, and nobody knew for some time where he was,” Campos said.